VenCo(17)

Even now, after the Malcolm humiliation, there was still that feeling that things were changing, that things were bright. Maybe there was more out there, waiting for her. She just wondered what that meant for Stella. Could Lucky live a new life knowing she’d sent her last family member away, stashing her in a nursing home where she couldn’t drunk knit or watch horror movies at an impossible volume late into the night?

She looked over her shoulder just as a third-floor window lit up. Stella lifted the pane, stuck her head out, and began to clap.

“Great job! You’re magnificent!”

It took a moment for Lucky to realize she was shouting at the black cat, not her. She sighed and stood up.

“Oh, hey, Lucky. Come on, dinner’s getting cold. I mean, it’s cereal so it’s supposed to be cold but still . . . Did you see that cat? God, what style.” She went back in and shut the window.

“You’re also doing a great job,” Lucky muttered to herself, dusting off the seat of her pants. “You are magnificent! Working every day and taking care of everyone. God, what style.”

She made her way inside to her underwhelming dinner.



The Maiden answered the FaceTime call on the balcony of her condo, a curvy woman in a gold bikini sunbathing beside her.

“Is this a bad time?” the Mother asked, seeing that her colleague was not alone.

“Actually, this right here is a great time.” The Maiden smiled. “Also, she’s asleep.” She gently slapped the sunbather’s thigh, and the woman groaned and rolled over onto her side. Even still, the Maiden got up and walked inside to the kitchen island, pouring herself a glass of water. “I hear he’s on the move.”

“Yes, so is the fifth—Freya,” the Mother answered.

“God, I love Freya,” the Maiden replied. “And she has the exact location?”

“Yes, the Bookers helped.” The Mother fed strips of bacon to her pit bull, cooing as she did. “There’s a good girl, Hecate.”

“So they have a jump on him. Should we let them know he’s searching?”

The Mother paused before answering. “No. I don’t want them rattled. They need to stay focused.”

“Isn’t that—I don’t know—careless? Shouldn’t we tell them there’s a Good Walker on their tail? He’s not being quiet anymore—he’s activated.” The Maiden sat on a stool and propped her phone against a bottle while she cleaned up the makings of lunch from the island counter.

“We’ll keep a careful eye. If he gets too close, we’ll inform them. But for now, we say nothing. We have to think of the entire group before any individual witch.” The Mother was maternal, as her name suggested, but could also be the most cutthroat of the Oracle. After all, she had a large brood to care for.

“Alright,” the Maiden drawled. “I just . . .”

Her phone beeped at her—the call had ended.

She passed a hand over her braids and finished her thought. “I just think we need to remember the entire group is made up of individual witches.”

Then she went back out onto the balcony to bask in the golden heat waiting out there, hoping she could take her mind off the mission, even if just for another hour.





6

A Complete Fucking 180 Over General Tso Chicken and Shitty Rice




On her lunch break on Monday, Lucky scrolled through the apartment-for-rent ads on her phone while the sauce on her plate of Chinese takeaway turned to jelly. She sighed a dozen times in as many minutes. The places that were decent either were out of her price range or so far away it would take her two hours to get to work.

Everything even remotely in their neighbourhood cost way more than they were paying now. She hadn’t noticed much in the way of gentrification, but clearly it was sneaking up on them. The most affordable were the basement units. But there was no way she could rent a place where the landlord lived upstairs: Stella got so loud so late at night they’d be kicked out inside a month.

“Fuck this.” She dumped her phone on the table and focused on eating the last remnants of her nasty noodles.

“Lucky St. James?”

She looked up to see what could only be described as an ethereal woman in a well-cut dark green suit approaching her table. Gold rings glimmered on every finger, and she was carrying nothing but a long, envelope-flap Fendi bag. Clearly, she did not shop in the places Lucky did. This couldn’t be good. No one with this kind of presence ever talked to her, not for any reason that wasn’t trouble.

“Are you Miss St. James?” Up close, the woman was young, younger than Lucky, even. Her hair was blond and flawless, her skin clear and unlined.

“Uh, yes, that’s me.”

Maybe she was a lawyer. Maybe Lucky was being served? But why? She didn’t have enough time to get into trouble or enough money to make it worth anyone’s while. And then it was like the woman could read her mind.

“Don’t freak out,” she said. “I’m here about a job.” She slid into the chair attached to the other side of the table and placed her purse in front of her.

“A job?”

“Yes. You work for McManus Personnel, right?”

Lucky glanced anxiously at the very expensive bag sitting so close to the sticky food tray. Then a thought occurred to her, and she dropped her fork. “Are you from McManus? Oh shit, am I being fired? Listen, I’m on my lunch break. I know its two o’clock, but I only got to take it now—I’m not late or skipping out. I—”